Dear Readers,
Being the Editor of a scientific journal is a most exciting job for a person who devoted a large part of his/her professional career to research. For me, it has been a great honor and privilege to be appointed as the new Editor-in-Chief of COPD: The Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. First of all, I must express my gratitude to my predecessors for steering this journal from its birth through adolescence to achieve a good and steady position among the major respiratory journals. Then, I would like to share with you my vision of the journal and possible ways for further growth. An obvious question I asked myself before accepting the appointment of Editor-in-Chief was whether we still need a journal dedicated to one disease. The answer was immediately “yes” in consideration of the continuously increasing epidemic of COPD worldwide and the incomplete knowledge of its pathophysiology despite the wealth of basic and clinical studies, which outgrow the space available in more general journals. I am confident that this journal will continue, under my leadership and with the help of a highly qualified Editorial Board, to increase our understanding of the complex mechanisms underlying the different clinical conditions that have been classified as COPD.
In a time of growing number of scientific journals, there is more and more competition for attracting good papers, thus increasing the journal visibility and impact. Strategies to pursue this goal are to keep publishing regular review articles on COPD-related hot topics written by highly respected authors and to select original papers that combine scientific quality and wide dissemination, with a sound balance between basic and clinical science. Nowadays, communication is spreading very fast around the world, which makes immediacy an urgent requirement also for scientific information. Thus, a priority for the new editorial team of the journal will be to reduce significantly the time of the editorial process. All members of the Editorial Board will be committed to ensure that manuscripts are reviewed quickly but also in a constructive way even when a favorable decision cannot be made, ultimately remembering that detailed editorial criticisms are meant to enable improvement in the quality of the manuscripts and also help authors’ future research. We hope that combining rapidity and quality of the peer-review process can make the journal appealing to authors, thus possibly triggering a virtuous circle by which publishing good papers attracts submissions of good manuscripts, thus contributing to increase visibility and ranking of the journal.
Clearly, such a delicate editorial work requires a close collaboration between members of the Editorial Board and the staff of the Editorial Office, but also the indispensable contribution of submitting authors. Thus, I would like to encourage you to work with the Editorial Board and me to contribute to maintain the quality of our journal at the level achieved by our predecessors or possibly further improve it.